RNC Chair Warns CNN, NBC: Drop Hillary Clinton Documentaries

Republican National Committee chairman Reince Priebus has now taken to threatening news stations. Priebus threatened to pull the RNC’s partnership with CNN and NBC for the 2016 presidential primary debates if the networks moved forward with plans to air documentary films about Hillary Clinton.

Because the networks planned on airing programs about one of the most influential female figures in Washington, the GOP is up in arms, saying that coverage of the senator would be “promoting” Clinton, and would be “unfair to the candidates for the Democratic nomination in 2016 who might compete against Secretary Clinton… and to the Republican nominee should Clinton compete in the general election.”

Priebus wrote to CNN President Jeff Zucker and NBC Chairman Robert Greenblatt, calling the networks’ documentaries “a thinly veiled attempt at putting a thumb on the scales of the 2016 presidential election,” The Hill reports.

He voiced his concerns publicly in a statement about the “special treatment” of Clinton by CNN and NBC, saying, “If they have not agreed to pull this programming prior to the start of the RNC’s Summer Meeting on August 14, I will seek a binding vote stating that the RNC will neither partner with these networks in 2016 primary debates nor sanction primary debates they sponsor.” So there.

To many people, it isn’t strange that cable television would want to air programs on Hillary Clinton, former First Lady, former Secretary of State, and one of the most influential women in the history of American politics. But Reince Priebus and the Republican Party see right through their “sneaky attempt” to promote Clinton for the next presidential election season, even though Clinton has made no announcements that she will run again in three years.

“This suggests a deliberate attempt at influencing American political opinion in favor of a preferred candidate,” Priebus wrote. Other Republican politicians have stepped up to back Priebus’s ultimatum. Iowa GOP Chairman A.J. Spiker called CNN and NBC’s decision to go forward with the films an attempt to give Clinton “celebrity status.”

It is no surprise that an anti-woman party who attempted to give “celebrity status” to an ignorant, hypocritical, and incapable vice presidential candidate, in order to win an election a year ago, would define the networks’ films on Clinton as Democratic political propaganda, ignoring the fact that even if Clinton had never run for president, she would still be a figure worth creating programs about. Programs that don’t even include American flag bikinis or killing wolves for sport.

The 67th US Secretary of State and former First Lady graduated from Yale Law School, became the first female chair of the Legal Services Corporation, became the first female partner at Rose Law Firm, and was twice listed as one of the 100 most influential lawyers in America. While she was First Lady of Arkansas, she reformed the state’s education system.

Clinton became a senator for New York in 2000, marking the first time a US First Lady had run for public office. She won more primaries and delegates than any other female candidate in US history when she ran in the 2008 presidential election, narrowly losing to President Obama. She then became his Secretary of State.

If Clinton does decide to run in the 2016 presidential election, and if she wins that race, it will be because of her merits and accomplishments and not because a couple of t.v. networks boosted her ratings or made her a star.